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THE KENSINGTON RUNE STONE 

THE OLDEST NATIVE DOCUMENT OF AMERICAN 

HISTORY 

r 

H. R. HOLAND 

One of the most interesting questions that has appeared 
in the historical field in many years is the one popularly known 
as the Kensington Rune Stone. It is now twenty-one years 
since it first came to light and dm'ing the first ten it lay still- 
born and utterly discredited as a crude forgery. Since then, 
however, it has not only come to life but has survived numer- 
ous attacks by learned critics, until it now is a subject of 
debate by exj^erts of two continents. 

The object of this review is to present the latest phases of 
the discussion concerning the rune stone to the readers of the 
Wisconsin Magazine of History, but I am in a quandary 
as to where I should begin. Some of our readers are quite 
familiar with the various stages of the controversy but I 
understand that the greater number have merely heard its 
name. In view of this, perhaps a very brief introduction of 
the subject will be desirable. 

The Kensington Rune Stone is a slab of graj^vacke about 
thirty inches long, seventeen inches wide, and seven inches 
thick. It weighs about two hundred and thirty pounds. 
Three-fifths of the length of its face is covered by an inscrip- 
tion in very neat runic characters. This inscription is con- 
tinued for a similar distance on one of its sides. The unin- 
scribed two-fifths of its length Avas evidently intended to be 
planted in the ground. 

The stone was found by a farmer by the name of Olaf 
Oilman, who lives about three or four miles northeast of 
Kensington, a station on the Minneapolis, St. Paul and 
Sault Ste. Marie Railway, in the west central part of Minne- 



/ 



r^ 



2 U. R. Holand 

sota. He was grubbing stumps on his land which consists in 
part of a rolHng elevation surrounded by a marsh. In 
grubbing out a poplar tree, about eight to ten inches in 
diameter, he found the stone on this elevation just beneath 
the surface of the ground, lying with the inscribed face down- 
ward, closely embraced by the roots of the tree. 

The find was soon brought to the attention of a number of 
learned men of the time. Strangely enough, the deciphering 
of the inscription seemed to present great difficulties to these 
men, who were unable to read a large portion of it. They 
made out, however, that the inscription mentioned Vinland — 
the name which I^eif Ericson in the year 1000 bestowed upon 
a certain portion of the Atlantic coast of America. As the 
language employed, or as much of it as was made out, was 
plainly not that of Leif Ericson's tongue, the inscription was 
quickly pronounced a clumsy forgery. The stone was 
returned to Mr. Ohman, therefore, who made of it a suitable 
doorstep to his granary. 

Nine years later I chanced to be in that vicinity in search 
of material for my history of the Norwegian settlements in 
America. The old runic hoax was recalled to me ; and as I for 
years had been interested in the study of runes, I obtained 
the stone from Mr. Ohman as an interesting souvenir. 

When I returned home and deciphered the inscription my 
amusement changed to amazement for I decided that it was 
not a clumsy forgery dealing with Leif Ericson's discovery 
of America in the year 1000, but that it contained a dramatic 
recital of an expedition into the middle of the continent in the 
year 1362! The language and i*unes of Leif Ericson's time 
could easily have been imitated as we have a multitude of 
patterns of both ; but the date 1362 is a peculiarly difficult one, 
not only linguistically and runologically, but also historically. 
What an unheard of date in which to locate Norsemen in 
America! This forger, if he was one, was evidently a most 
courageous man. The following is a copy of the inscription 
with interlinear transliteration : 



Gift 

A.uthor 

f£8 & '^20 



+X'M^rX1IK.Y{KF:MfXR-U= 

J><s.<j'4 A^c-^-s;- wo'VA^ fc~voj><.vvo bt.-tt'w 

YI:i=iy:*IY^PXi:?:YXi^K@H- 

«.V- tot-ekt'-tt' A.VM 

* This character has suffered so much from weathering as to be illegible. 
t The runic character for e in this word was inadvertently omitted in mak- 
ing this copy. 



4 H. R. Holand 

I translate as follows, putting into parentheses words 
which the rune master seems to have omitted : 

Eight Goths^ and twenty-two Norsemen on (an) exploration-journey 
from Vinland through the western regions. We had camp by two sker- 
ries one day's journey north from this stone. We were (out) and fished 
one day. When we came home (we) found ten men, red with blood and 
dead. Ave Maria! Save (us) from evil ! 

(We) have ten of our party by the sea to look after (or for) our 
vessels 14 day journey from this island. Year 1362. 

At first sight the truth of this inscription seems most 
improbable. That a band of adventurers should have pene- 
trated to the very heart of the continent one hundred and 
thirty years before America was discovered by Columbus 
seems so incredible that almost everyone who hears of it is 
prompted to ask, "Can this be possible?" Yet this objection 
so generally urged is really very superficial. We have many 
other journeys on record, of greater extent and more hazard- 
ous, which we know to have been performed. For instance, 
Ferdinand de Soto in 1542 pushed one thousand five hundred 
miles into the primeval forest of America. Jean Nicolet 
without a single white companion in 1634 made a journey of 
two thousand miles amid savage tribes who never before had 
seen a white man and returned to tell the tale. So also did 
that amazing fur trader, Peter Pond, who in the years 
1773-86 wandered at will with his w^ares all over the North- 
west, penetrating even to the Great Slave Lake. Cabeza de 
Vaca in 1537 crossed the continent from the mouth of the 
Mississippi to California with only three companions. We 
have no reason to suppose that it was safer to sojourn among 
the Indians in 1537 than in 1362. Nor have we reason to 
suppose that the hardy Norsemen were less capable than the 
Spaniards of making arduous journeys. Is it not rather a 
reasonable supposition that the Norsemen should finally 
undertake to explore this continent which they had discovered 

* i.e., native to West Gothland in the soxithwestern part of Sweden. In the 
fourteenth century this was an independent province, united with a part of Nor- 
way under one king. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 5 

three hundred and sixty-two years previously and which we 
know from other indubitable historical records they occasion- 
ally visited ?" 

After a prolonged study of the inscription I became con- 
vinced that this remarkable stone had been rejected without a 
proper investigation. The verdict pronounced against it ten 
years previously was based on an extremely faulty reading of 
the inscription and the arguments advanced against it did not, 
therefore, apply. With the hope of directing public attention 
once more to the matter, I presented my views to the public. 
Since then it has been a lively subject of debate both here and 
in Europe. 

Out of the widely extended controversy which followed 
has gradually come a clearer understanding of the surround- 
ing field of research. We have learned that the vernacular of 
South Sweden (the home of the rune master) in 1362 was not 
greatly different from its modern language, being analogous 
in its development with the same period of English speech. 
We have also discovered several important historical side 
Hghts which serve to illuminate the subject. There are now 
many men of learning who recognize in this inscription the 
oldest American historical docimient dealing with the coming 
of white men to this country. 

In this research the JNIinnesota Historical Society has 
taken a prominent part. Shortly after I published my 
reasons for believing the inscription a true record of pre- 
Columbian exploration the society appointed a committee of 
five members, headed by the late Professor X. H. Winchell, 
to make a thorough investigation of the subject. After more 
than a year's investigation this committee published a pre- 
liminary report of sixty printed pages, concluding with the 
resolution that the committee "takes a favorable view of the 
authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone." After this 

'The last historical voyage to America was made in IS-IT; see Islandske 
Annaler, edited by Professor Gustav Storm. 



6 H. R. Holand 

report appeared in print the inscription was the subject of 
much argument both at home and abroad. The committee 
therefore waited ahnost two years before rendering its final 
report. After all arguments on both sides seemed to have 
been presented, the committee published its final report, 
reaffirming in positive terms its conviction that the inscription 
is genuine.^ 

The committee's report is especially valuable for the light 
it throws on the geological and topographical conditions 
which center around the stone and which the committee finds 
to be strong evidence in favor of the inscription. It also 
adopts and amplifies the theory that the explorers came by 
way of Hudson Bay.* The committee has been criticised for 
not having had anj^ competent scholar in Scandinavian 
languages present at its sittings. However, it had a better 
way. Instead of relying on any one scholar who might be 
unduly prejudiced for or against the stone the committee 
obtained opinions on all mooted linguistic questions from as 
many supposed experts on both sides as possible. With these 
opinions before it the committee was able to give them the 
impartial consideration of a judicial review. 

LINGUISTIC OBJECTIONS 

Aside from the superficial argument that such an expedi- 
tion is too improbable to be true the most general criticism has 
been against the linguistic aspects of the inscription. Differ- 
ent words have been pointed out to show that the language is 
not in accordance with fourteenth century usage. The 
weakness of this line of criticism is the lack of agreement 
among the critics. What one critic has pointed to as a serious 
anachronism has been admitted to be perfectly legitimate by 
another. 

^ Both reports with many illustrations are printed in the Minnesota Historical 
Collections, XV, 221-86. 

* This theory was first advanced by Professor Andrew Fossum in an article 
printed in the Northfield (Minn.) Norwegian-American, Oct. 9. 1909. I shall 
later in this discussion point out further evidence in support of this theory. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 7 

An illustration of these linguistic arguments we have in 
the so-called English words on the stone. These are "mans," 
"from," "illy," and "of vest." These words were for years 
the most controverted parts of the inscription; many critics 
have pointed to them as the strongest evidence that the inscrip- 
tion can not be genuine. By the use of these words they 
claimed the rune master has proved himself a forger — that he 
must have been an immigrant who had already become so 
Americanized he could no longer write his mother tongue. 
However, when these words were submitted to Professors 
Sodervall, Kock, and Jonsson, the most eminent philologists 
of Sweden and Denmark, they recognized them as rare and 
antique forms sporadically occurring in the dialects of the 
fourteenth century, showing an intimate acquaintance with 
obsolete forms on the part of the rune master.^ The linguistic 
forms of the inscription have indeed proved a boomerang to 
its critics. As one of the most eminent professors of Scandi- 
navian languages in this country, not a believer in the inscrip- 
tion, said : "There is not a man who has criticised the language 
of the rune stone who has not burned his fingers." 

It is reasonable to suppose that the men mentioned in the 
inscription were wandering soldiers and sailors gathered from 
different parts of Norway and Sweden ( Gothland ) . Their 
orthography, grammar, and phonetics may therefore be 
supposed to partake of the irregular, careless forms character- 
istic of such roving people. It is therefore as unreasonable to 
judge the language of such men by the conventional literary 
forms of the monastic clerks of that period as it would now 
be to compare the language of an illiterate soldier of fortune 
with that of a college professor. Notwithstanding these 
eccentricities of speech it is possible to justify the presence 

° For a full discussion of these and other criticized words see my article 
entitled, "Are There English Words On the Kensington Rune-Stone?" in Records 
of the Past, IX, 240-45; "The Kensington Rune-Stone Abroad," Ibid., X, 260-71. 
See also Professor Possum's able analysis in the Norwegian-American, Feb. 24, 
1911. 



8 H. R. Holand 

of eveiy word in the inscription with one exception with the 
speech of Bohuslsen, Sweden, of the Middle Ages. This one 
exception is the word opdage. It has not been found in any 
of the Hterary remains of that period. Sodervall, the Noah 
Webster of Sweden, says that while the word looks suspicious, 
he knows of no other word in use at that time expressing the 
same idea. It has been suggested that the word is a loan from 
the Dutch or East-Friesian where it early occurs.'' As there 
was much commerce between Scandinavian and Dutch and 
Friesian ports sailors would be among the first to pick up such 
words. We have diaries written by Scandinavian seamen of 
the Middle Ages in which Dutch and German words fre- 
quently occur, showing that such loans were common.^ Per- 
sonally I do not believe it is a loan from these countries as 
the word occurs in the form updaaga in the dialects of Upper 
Telemarken and other remote parts of Norway where the 
speech has had an autochthonous development with but very 
few loans from abroad. 

The present meaning of the word opdage is "to discover," 
but in all the dialects of the Middle Ages mentioned in the 
above paragraph it had a different meaning. It then meant 
"to reveal, to come to light, to make known." This is exactly 
the meaning of the word as it is used on the rune stone. These 
adventurers did not set out "to discover" a prospective objec- 
tive, but were on a journey "to make known," "to bring to 
light," "to reveal" a terra incognita. The word I use in 
translating it — "exploration- journey" — is only approxi- 
mately correct. 

THE DAI.ECARLIAN THEORY 

The most elaborate attack on the Kensington stone is an 
address delivered by Professor G. T. Flom before the Illinois 

"See Nederlandsch Woordenboek, XI, 407-11; W0rterbuch der Ostfriesischen 
Sprache; and Kalkars Ordhog over det Danske Sprog i Middelalderen. 

'' See for instance the diary of Alexander Leyell, telling of his journey to 
Greenland in 1605, which abounds in Dutch loan-words. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 9 

State Historical Society and later printed by him.® The chief 
feature of this address is an attempt to prove that the inscrip- 
tion is the modern fabrication of a native of the district of 
Dalarne in Sweden in which district the use of runes sporad- 
ically existed down to the close of the eighteenth century. 
Professor Flom is so positive in his belief that he has identi- 
fied the runes and language of the Kensington stone with 
those of Dalarne that he feels able to name the parish from 
which the runic forger hailed. We shall quickly see how 
correct he is in his identification. 

For proof Professor Flom refers to the Dalecarlian alpha- 
bets as given by Liljegren and Ihre-Gotlin. Unfortunately 
he omits to print these so that the reader may collate the 
Kensington alphabet with them. We will therefore do so 
novv'-. In the accompanying table I give these alphabets 
exactly as they are reproduced by Professor Noreen in his 
exhaustive discussion of the Dalecarlian runes in Fornvcennen 
for 1906. 

A glance at these alphabets will convince the reader that 
the writer of the Kensington inscription did not get his ininic 
lore from them. Instead of identity we find here such dis- 
parity in form that no runic inscription of the Middle Ages 
is more dissimilar to the Kensington alphabet than are the 
Dalecarlian inscriptions. Only h, h, i, m, and r are identical 
in form ; a, d, f, t, and are of the same type but show varia- 
tions, while c, g, k, I, o, p, q, v, oc, y, z, ce, and a show more 
or less recent fantastic forms approaching in many cases the 
printed Latin forms which came into use. In some cases the 
character representing one letter has been adopted to repre- 
sent another; thus we have the character for h adopted to 
represent a, and the s has been attributed to x. 

When we compare the linguistic forms of Dalarne with 
those of the Kensington inscription Flom's theory proves 

* Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1910, 105-25. 





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The Kensington Rune Stone 11 

equally imtenable. To be brief there are two convincing 
proofs why the Kensington scribe has not employed the 
dialect of Dalarne. The first is that for the last three hundred 
years the aspirate h has dropped out of the Dalecarlian 
speech.^ In contrast to this we find the Kensington inscrip- 
tion abounding in aspirates such as hem^ har, hade, havet, 
dagh, oh, ahr, etc. The other is that the word-forms in 
Dalarne are in many cases very different. If the inscription 
were in the dialect of Dalarne, we would find ema for hem, ela 
for illy, menn for man, 0r for ahr, sjd for se, vesto for vest, 
nor do for nord, resa for rise, duce for dedh, voro for var, 
bliiwd for hlodh, humo for kom, ver for vi, sker for skjcer, 
esu for deno, sen for havet, etc.^° No Swedish dialect is 
further from the Kensington inscription than the Dalecarlian. 

IS SUCH AN EXPEDITION HISTORICAXLY PROBABLE? 

The most remarkable thing about this inscription is its 
date. Removed as it is more than three hundred years from 
the time of the Norse discoveries of America it seemed so 
remote, so incompatible with known facts, that this more than 
anything else prejudiced the critical mind against it. For 
years it was treated as the wild guess of some simpleton, 
ignorant of the most elementary facts in early American 
history. 

A careful study of docimients dealing with the history of 
Greenland, however, sheds light on this apparent absurdity 
and shows that the date is most fitting. We learn from these 
documents that immediately prior to the date on the rune 
stone there was a great revival of Greenland commerce. 
Traffic to America was again resumed, or, at least, America 
was again discovered; a Norse expedition sent out by the 
king was actually in American waters in 1362. To under- 

9 See Boethius, Levander, and Noreen in their joint discussion of Dalecarlian 
inscriptions in F ornvcennen 1906, 63-91. 

*°See Noreen's Ordlista Ofver Dalmdlet. 



12 H.R.Holand 

stand these documents a brief glance at Greenland's history is 
necessary. 

Greenland was settled in the latter part of the tenth 
century and soon became quite populous. The colony was 
divided into two parts, known as the Eastern and the Western 
settlements, both of them, however, lying on the west coast of 
Greenland. The Eastern settlement was the larger, contain- 
ing twelve parishes and churches, several nunneries and 
monasteries, and a resident bishop. This lay a short distance 
west of Cape Farwell. About four hundred miles farther 
northwest lay the Western settlement, containing three 
churches. During the first two hundred years of its history 
we find frequent mention of Greenland in Icelandic annals 
and chronicles, showing that intercourse between the two 
countries was frequent." Little by little this intercourse 
seems to have ceased until toward the end of the thirteenth 
century we read only at long intervals the meager mention of 
the ordination of a new bishop for Greenland. 

Under date of 1309 we are informed that the bishop of 
Greenland has returned to Norway. A new bishop is 
ordained and sails for Greenland.^' No further mention is 
made of Greenland for more than thirty years ; not even the 
archbishop knew whether the Greenland bishop was still alive. 
Under date of 1343 we come to the next entry, stating that a 
new bishop for Greenland was ordained. Later it adds that 
this was a mistake as the old bishop was still alive.^^ It also 
adds that the new bishop was unable to find transportation to 
Greenland and never reached his charge. This shows that 
commerce and intercourse between the two countries had at 
that time almost ceased. 

" See particularly Floamanna Saga, Fostbrcedra Saga, also various Thoettir 
in Flateyarbok, 

" See Flatey Annals and other annals under given date. 

"See Flatev Annals; Skalholt Annals; the annals copied bv Bishop Skuleson 
(A.M.410,4); also A.M.411,4.; 417,4; and 429,4 under 1342 and 1343. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 13 

About this time, however, we come to a great improvement 
in the relations of the mother country with her distant colony. 
In the year 1341 the Bishop of Bergen, alarmed, perhaps, at 
not hearing anything from his old friend, the Bishop of 
Greenland, selected one of the trustiest priests of his diocese 
and sent him to Greenland "upon errands of the Church."^* 
This priest was Ivar Bardsen to whose account we are princi- 
pally indebted for what we know of Greenland in the Middle 
Ages. The letter gives the impression that Bardsen was 
expected to make only a brief sojourn in Greenland and then 
return. However, we find later that he remained there many 
years as business manager of the large properties that 
belonged to the Greenland cathedral. ^^ 

Ivar Bardsen gives a cheerful account of the conditions of 
the Eastern settlement, showing it to be in prosperous circum- 
stances. He presumably sent a similar report back to his 
superior in Bergen. This probably explains the revival of 
Greenland's commerce w^hich immediately followed. In 1344 
a merchant by the name of Thord Egilsson made a trip 
from Bergen to Greenland and returned the same year with 
much goods. The f olloAving year a very large merchant ves- 
sel was fitted out in Bergen and sailed for Greenland. In 
1346 it returned with "an immense amount of goods." As 
the king at that time lived in Bergen these things would no 
doubt come under his personal observation. It also seems 
that the profits of these Greenland traders were so large that 
the king decided to reserve the trade as his special monopoly. 
This he did by proclamation in 1348. 

Some time after Ivar Bardsen reached Greenland he was 
commissioned by the chief public officer of the colony to pro- 
ceed with a company of men to the Western settlement for the 
purpose of driving the Eskimos out of this settlement. When 

" A copy of his letter commending his messenger to the good will of all con- 
cerned is found in the Bartholin MSS. Tomen Litr. E. S. 479, Copenhagen. 

^^ We find him back again in Norway in 1364 where he is recorded as being 
a witness in a legal trial. 



14 H. R. Holand 

he and his men reached the Western settlement they found it 
entirely dej)opulated. Neither Norsemen nor Eskimos were 
found; but instead they found an abundance of cattle and 
sheep wandering about without care/^ 

There is nothing in the account to suggest that the colo- 
nists had been massacred by the Eskimos. No bloodshed is 
mentioned, and there is no evidence of plunder. In fact this 
presumption is excluded as Ivar Bardsen found the cattle and 
sheep grazing about in great number. This shows that Bard- 
sen's party must have reached the colony only a short time 
after the disappearance of the inhabitants as domestic animals 
could scarcely survive the severe winters of Greenland, nine 
months long, without care. The fragmentary account that 
is left to us gives absolutely no clew to what had happened 
there. 

The answer to this question we find in a remarkable docu- 
ment found in the cathedral of Skalholt, in Iceland. This 
cathedral was in the Middle Ages the great repository of Ice- 
landic records and Hterary treasiu'es. In 1630 it was destroyed 
by fire, and a great mass of these docimients perished. Bishop 
Gisle Oddson, who was born at Skalholt, being a son of the 
former bishop, Odd Einerson, was for many years officiating 
in the cathedral and therefore had the fullest opportunity of 
becoming acquainted with its manuscripts. After the fire he 
made from memory a synopsis of some of the most remarkable 
documents that were lost. The following is one of them: 

1342. The inhabitants of Greenland fell voluntarily from the true 
faith and the Christian religion and after having given up all good man- 

^'' Following are the exact words of the text: "Item dette alt, som forsagt 
er sagde oss Iffver Bardsen Gr0nLEnder, som var Forstander paa Bischobsgar- 
den i Gardum paa Gr0nland udi mange Aar, at hand havde alt dette seett, och 
hand var en af dennem, som var udneffender af Lagmanden, at fare til Vester- 
bygden emod de Skrelinge, att uddriffve de Schrellinge udaff Vesterbygd; och da 
de komme didt, da funde de ingen mand, enten christen eller heden, viden noget 
villdt Fse og Faaer, och bespissede sig aff det villdt Fae, och toge saa meget som 
Schivene kunde berre, och zeylede saa dermed hjemb, och forschreffne Iffver var 
der med." See complete account printed in Gr0nlands Historiske Mindesmerker, 
III, 248-60, from an old Danish translation of the sixteenth century contained in 
the Arne Magnean MSS. No. 777. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 15 

ners and true virtues turned to the people of America. Some say that 
Greenland lies very near to the western lands of the world. ^^ 

There can be no question that here we find an explana- 
tion of the disappearance of the people of the Western settle- 
ment as witnessed by Ivar Bardsen. Left to themselves in 
that dismal region, scarcely seeing a Em*opean vessel once in 
a generation, it is no wonder if they gave up the doubtful 
blessing of the Church which was incapable of ministering 
to them and turned "voluntarily" to a region whose favored 
nature was a common tradition. One of their chief needs was 
timber, both for building and for fuel; for this they had to 
depend upon the doubtful contribution of the sea. They knew 
that this timber came from America (Markland) .^^ It would 
therefore be a most sensible decision to emigrate in a body to 
that place where all their needs would be easily supplied, 
taking with them what cattle they could. 

It seems that this emigration of the western colonists re- 
sulted in trade relations being again resumed with America. 
Up to this time we have no mention in any record whatsoever 
of any vessel having sailed to America since Bishop Eric Upsi 
journeyed thither in 1121. However, five years after these 
colonists left for America we read of a vessel from Green- 
land which in 1347 "had been to IMarkland" (supposedly 
Nova Scotia or Southern Labrador) .^^ This vessel, carrying 
a crew of eighteen men, on her return voyage to Greenland 
lost her anchor and drifted ashore in Iceland. The next year 
it sailed to Bergen, having for a passenger Jon Guttorm- 

" "1342. Groenlandia incolse a vera fide et religione Christiana sponte sua 
defecerunt, et repudiatis omnibus honestis moribus et veris vertutibus ad Americas 
populos se converterunt; existimant enim quidam Groenlandium adeo vicinam esse 
occidentalibus orbis regionius." The document was translated out of the original 
records by Finn Magnusen, the eminent editor-in-chief of Gr0n1ands Historiske 
Mindesmerker, and is printed there for the first time in Vol. Ill, 459. 

"^ There is an old account of the thirteenth century describing life in Green- 
land which mentions that the timber on which the Greenlanders depended "came 
out of the bays of Markland"; quoted in Ibid., Ill, 243. 

" This fact is recorded in six diflferent Icelandic annals ; see among them 
the Flatey Annals, the Skalholt Annals, and the Odda Annals under 1347. 



16 H. R. Holand 

son, a great chieftain of Iceland, who went to Bergen to see 
the king. 

We can easily imagine that the arrival of this vessel must 
have been a great event. Here was a company of Green- 
landers who could not only give a complete account of their 
own almost unknown country but could do much more. Here 
for the first time as far as we know stood men upon Norwe- 
gian soil who could from experience tell of America — that 
mysterious land across the sea where grew the luscious grape 
and the "self-so^vn wheat." They could tell of a land whose 
wealth of choice timber, rich fisheries, and fertile soil offered 
quite other favorable conditions of life than the bleak and 
barren shores of Greenland. No wonder that the king with 
such visions before him reserved trade with Greenland and 
the western lands as a private monopoly. We may also as- 
sume that he laid plans for immediately developing this 
monopoly and for extending his domains to the regions be- 
yond. 

However, that same year, 1348, there came to Bergen 
another vessel that gave the king quite other things to think 
about. This was the vessel which brought the terrible Black 
Plague to Norway. During the next few years this plague 
exacted a terrible toll in Norway, laying some sections of the 
land completely waste and paralyzing all industries. It also 
proved very fatal to shipping so that "many vessels had only 
four or five survivors." 

These conditions prevented the king for some years from 
carrying out his plans towards his western lands. But we 
find that in 1354 he is again occupied with the project. We 
have left to us a letter from him empowering Paul Knutson, 
one of his most prominent military and legal officers, to fit 
out an expedition and sail to Greenland. The purpose is 
stated to be to preserve Christianity. "We do this to the 
honor of God and for the sake of our soul and our predeces- 



The Kensington Rune Stone 17 

sors who established Christianity in Greenland and we will 
not now let it perish"-'^ 

The last words no doubt point to the spiritual salvation 
of the colonists of the Western settlement who in 1342 had 
apostatized from the true faith and emigrated to America.^^ 
To find them would necessitate an exploration of the Western 
settlement and subsequently of unknown parts of America to 
which they had emigrated. This, again, explains the presence 
of such a notable leader as Paul Knutson and also the long 
absence of the expedition from home. It left Norway in 
1355 but was not again heard of, according to Professor 
Storm, until 1363 or 1364."' 

If we assume that the expedition had only Greenland as 
an objective, it becomes very difficult to understand its long 
absence from home. Paul Knutson was a very important 
man of those times, being chief judicial officer of Gulathing 
(Gulathings Lagmand),"^ the largest judicial district, com- 
prising all the western and central parts of Norway. He was 
also one of the king's lendermcend having in charge the ad- 
ministration of a large district near Bergen. Finally he was 
an officer in the king's army and a large landowner. It is in- 
conceivable that such a man of affairs should linger year after 
year in the drearj^ little colony of Greenland. If, however, 
his mission meant the rescue of the lost colonists who had emi- 
grated to unknown parts of America a few years before we 

^ An ancient Danish translation of this document is printed in Gr0nlanii» 
Historiske Mindesmerker, III, 120-22. Cf. also Storm's Studier over Vinlandsrei- 
serne, p. 365; Munch's Dei, Norske Folks Historie, Unionsperioden, I, 312. 

*^The spiritual welfare of Greenland seems to have been a matter of deep 
concern to this pious monarch, Magnus Erikson. When he drew up his will in 
1347 he left a large amount of money to the cathedral in Greenland. 

" See Storm, 365. Storm does not cite any authority for this conclusion. 
I find reason, however, to believe he is correctly informed by a statement which 
occurs in a fragmentary annal (Arne Magnussen 423-24-) covering the years 
1328-72. From this we learn that Bishop Alf was ordained bishop of Greenland 
in 1365. As it was customary to ordain a new bishop immediately or within a 
year after the news of his predecessor's death, and as his predecessor, Arnald, 
had died in 1349, this means that no vessel had returned from Greenland in the 
Intervening years until shortly before 1365. 

'^ See Diplomarium Norwegieum, 1347 and 1348. 



18 H. R. Holand 

see quite sufficient reasons for his continued absence. As a 
good Catholic he must have been horrified that so many of his 
king's subjects should have given up the faith and reverted to 
idolatry. He would feel it his duty to save them from eternal 
damnation by bringing them back into the Church. More- 
over, as special representative of the king he would feel called 
upon to examine the material conditions of this new land 
(America) recently brought to the attention of the king and 
to which his subjects had emigrated, and see if it was worth 
annexing to the crown. 

Here we have the striking coincidence of the presence of a 
Norse expedition in American waters in the very year re- 
corded in the inscription. Documentary evidence here ends 
but we can easily conceive the missing link. It is reasonable 
to suppose that after searching about in the adjacent parts of 
Greenland and America for clues of the missing colonists^ 
Paul Knutson and his party eventually reached the Vinland 
of traditional fame. Here a fortified base of operations is 
presumably established. Supposing this new land to be an 
island (which was the view held by all the old Norsemen) and 
reasoning that the colonists would be found somewhere on 
its shore, they send out an expedition to follow the shore and 
if necessary to circumnavigate the land. In the course of time 
they reach the interior of Hudson Bay. Here they find that 
the land again turns northward into the arctic wastes.^* 

What now would be the reasonable thing to be done? To 
continue northward without ample provisions and equipment 
would be to yield themselves to the fate of the arctic winter. 

" As is now well known, Vilhjalmur Stefansson in 1909 discovered a blonde 
tribe of huge Eskimos a short distance west of Hudson Bay, which may very 
likely be the descendants of the lost Greenland colonists. Among his collections 
is a photograph taken by his companion, Dr. Anderson of the University of Iowa. 
It shows Mt. Stefansson standing in the midst of a group of sixteen of these 
blonde Eskimos, every one of them having the facial appearance of a typical Nor- 
wegian farmer. Although Mr. Stefansson lacks but an inch of six feet in height 
he scarcely reaches to their shoulders. His account of his meeting with these 
strange people, printed in My Life in the Arctic, reads like an old-time epic. 
General Greely in the National Geographic Magazine points out that earlier 
arctic explorers have met this strange tribe of blonde Eskimos farther east. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 19 

Perhaps they were also under orders to report to headquar- 
ters in Vinland within a certain time. It is also likely that 
Hudson Bay was beginning to freeze over; its open season is 
only three months. 

They could not go north, but to the south opened a broad 
and navigable highway — the Nelson River. They therefore 
decide to split the expedition, a small party to remain with 
the vessels over winter while the larger number go up the 
Nelson River and then back over land to Vinland. This would 
also give them the opportunity of exploring the interior of 
this new land. They, of course, had no conception of the vast 
continent which separated them from their headquarters. 
Their impression was that America was a large island, very 
long north and south but not so big east and west. As they 
had traveled a vast distance from Vinland toward the north 
and now in Hudson Bay had returned several hundred miles 
toward the south, they probably reasoned that by some further 
travel southward they would reach a point not very far from 
Vinland to the west. The probability of this theory is sup- 
ported by the fact that when some time later ten of their num- 
ber are killed hy Indians they do not turn back but continue 
southeastward, which would be the direction of safety for 
them, — that is, their headquarters in Vinland, supposedly not 
far away. 

Our knowledge of the Paul Knutson expedition throws 
new light on the inscription. It reads that this journey of 
exploration "through the western regions" came from Vin- 
land — not from Norway or Greenland. This indicates that 
a lengthy stay had been made in the land jvist as was made 
by Knutson. It also mentions that they had more than one 
vessel ; therefore it was a well-equipped expedition like Knut- 
son's. The Latin letters A V 31, which are a part of the 
prayer that follows, suggest that a priest accompanied the 
party; this was no doubt the case in Knutson's expedition 
which according to the king's letter was a crusade for the 



20 H. R. Holand 

preservation of Christianity. Finally it would have been prac- 
tically impossible for the survivors of the Kensington party to 
return to Norway until 1364 which is the very year when the 
survivors of Ivnutson's party returned home. The date of their 
return was not brought out, however, until 1889 when Storm's 
book, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, appeared and inciden- 
tally mentions it. The opinion of geologists and the circum- 
stances surrounding the finding of the stone unite, however, 
in the conclusion that the inscription must have been written 
long before that time as will be shown below. 

The facts concerning the apostasy of the Greenland colo- 
nists and their subsequent emigration to America; the jour- 
ney to Bergen, the king's residence ; the Greenland voyagers 
who had been to America (Markland) ; the subsequent rescue 
expedition of Paul Knutson ; and other facts mentioned above 
are very little known even among well-informed historians. 
They have been gleaned from various rare sources difficult of 
access and have been correlated and published here for the first 
time. It is therefore extremely unlikely that any runic charla- 
tan perpetrating a hoax should have used this material as a 
basis for his purposeless account. If he by chance had known 
of the king's letter commissioning Knutson to start out on 
his expedition in 1355 he would have chosen a date for the in- 
scription in more obvious agreement with it — say 1356 or 
1357. For as stated above, the time of Knutson's return was 
not known until 1889 — a number of years after the inscrip- 
tion by any theory could have been written. We have there- 
fore here additional evidence in support of the truth of the 
inscription. 

ARGUMENTS FOR THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE INSCRIPTION 

I. The position of the stone in situ. The stone was found 
on a timbered elevation only a few feet from the edge of a 
marsh which surrounds it. About five hundred feet away 
across the open marsh and facing directly toward it stands 



The Kensington Rune Stone 21 

the house of Nils Flaten, a pioneer settler who has lived there 
continuously since 1884. The stone lay immediately below 
the surface of the ground, clutched in the grasp of the two 
largest roots of a poplar tree. One of the roots had followed 
the horizontal surface of the stone and then made an abrupt 
turn downward. The other root descended straight down- 
ward along the other side of the stone. Both roots were flat 
on the side touching the stone. At the two points where they 
passed over the edges of the stone they were wide and flat 
and sharply marked on the inside. It has been claimed that 
the runic forger might have dug a hole under a tree and then 
pushed the stone under the roots. Such a thing is possible 
but not in this case. It would be impossible to twist the tena- 
cious roots of a tree about and hold them in place to make 
them conform to the shape of the stone so closely unless it 
grew up from a very small sapling after the stone was de- 
posited there. Moreover, the flat surface of the roots prove 
that the tree must have grown up since the stone was placed. 
These facts have been substantiated by numerous affida- 
vits from people who saw the stump shortly after it was dug 
up ; also that the tree was from eight to ten inches in diameter. 
A poplar tree grows rapidly in the open. But this tree grew 
in a block of dense timber, overshadowed by larger trees. Mr. 
Ohman also states that it was a sickly tree of stunted growth. 
In order to learn something of its probable age Mr. Oilman 
was requested to cut down two other poplars of the same size 
and physical appearance. He was also asked, for purpose of 
comparison, to cut down two other poplars of the same size 
but of thrifty appearance and vigorous growth. He carefully 
selected these four trees, cut them down, and sent in a cross 
section of each. The first two were found to have respectively 
sixty-eight and seventy-five annual rings of growth ; the other 
two had forty and forty-five rings. ^^ 

^ Plate IV, volume XV, of the Minnesota Historical Collections shows cross 
sections of the healthy trees having forty and forty-five rings respectively. It 
was impossible to make a clear photographic copy of the stunted trees of same 
size, as the rings were too close and indistinct. 



22 H. R. Holand 

If, to be conservative, we assume that the tree was forty 
years old this brings us back to 1858 as the latest date when 
the stone could have been placed there. But this was many 
years before a single white settler had found his way to that 
section of the state. The first white settler in the county came 
there in 1865 and lived alone as a hermit in the wilderness for 
several years. Immigration followed the projected survey of 
the Great Northern Railway, which passed through Alexan- 
dria about twenty-five miles east of the finding place in 1878. 
At Alexandria Senator Knute Nelson was one of the first 
settlers. He took a homestead, now included within the city 
limits, in 1870. 

In 1858 the nearest railroad point to the finding place of 
the stone was La Crosse. Not until 1862 was there any con- 
struction in JMinnesota. In 1866 the first railroad west of 
St. Paul was built as far as St. Cloud, one hundred twenty 
miles from Kensington. No railroad reached Douglas 
County until 1878 when Alexandria, twenty-five miles from 
Kensington, was reached. If the Kensington inscription is 
a forgery we must suppose that a man of eminent runic, 
linguistic, and historical erudition set forth a hundred miles 
and more into an unsettled wilderness and there, exposed to 
attacks by savage animals and treacherous Indians, carved 
out a lengthy inscription which would bring him neither honor 
nor riches. This being done, he buries it upon a rough, 
timber-covered knoll surrounded by marshes — a place which 
an early visitor would never expect to see cultivated ! Such a 
supposition is too remote to be credible. 

II. The weathered appearance of the stone. The com- 
position of the stone is described as follows by Professor N. H. 
Winchell: "The composition of the stone makes it one of the 
most durable in nature, equaling granite and almost equaling 
the dense quartzite of the pipestone quarry in the southwest- 
ern part of Minnesota. On the surface of this quartzite, even 
where exposed to the weather since they were formed, the fine 



The Kensington Rune Stone 23 

glacial scratches and polishing are well preserved, and when 
covered by drift clay they seem not to have been changed at 

In 1910 when the controversy concerning the stone was at 
its height and a number of prominent scholars had pronounced 
it fraudulent because of the alleged presence of English 
words, etc., the stone was submitted to the examination of 
seven professional geologists. None of these experts were 
able to discover any evidence that the stone had been recently 
engraved. They were advised of the fact that prominent 
philologists considered the stone a modern forgery but not- 
withstanding this warning three of them did not hesitate posi- 
tively to affirm that the inscription showed great age. Pro^ 
fessor W. O. Hotchkiss, state geologist of Wisconsin, wrote 
the following statement : "After having carefully examined 
the so-called Kensington runic stone I have no hesitation in 
affirming that its inscription must have been carved very long 
ago — at least fifty to a hundred years."" 

Dr. Warren Upham, a specialist in glacial geology, gave 
the following opinion: "When we compare the excellent 
preservation of the glacial scratches shown on the back of the 
stone, which were made several thousand years ago, with the 
mellow, time-worn appearance of the face of the inscription, 
the conclusion is inevitable that this inscription must have 
been carved many hundred years ago." 

Professor N. H. Winchell wrote as follows: "The gen- 
eral 'mellow' color of the face of the gray^vacke (rune stone) 
and of the whole surface of the stone is also to be noted. This 
is the first apparent effect of weathering. Gray^vacke may 
be estimated to be fifty to a hundred times more durable in 
the weather than calcite, some grays^'^ackes being more re- 
sistant than others. * * * 

^ Minnesota Historical Collections, XV, 237. 

" Statement filed with Minnesota Historical Society. 



24 H, R. Holand 

"There are six stages of the weathering of graywacke 
which are exhibited by the stone, and they may be arranged 
approximately in a scale as follows : 

1 . A fresh break or cut 

2. Break or cut shown by the runes of the face 5 

3. Edge-face, which has not been engraved, but was 

apparently dressed by a rough bush-hammering. 5 

4. The inscribed face of the stone 10 

5. The finely glaciated and polished back side and the 

non-hammered portion of the edge 80 

6. The coarse gouging and the general beveling and 

deepest weathering of the back side 250 or 500 

"These figures are but rough estimates and are intended 
to express the grand epochs of time through Avhich the stone 
has passed since it started from the solid rock of which it 
formed a part prior to the Glacial period; and to a certain 
degree they are subject to the personal equation of the per- 
son who gives them. * * * If the figures in the fore- 
going series be all multiplied by 100, they would stand: 

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 

000: 500: 500: 1,000: 8,000: 25,000 or 50,000 

"Since 8,000 years is approximately the date of the end 
of the latest glaciation ( 5 ) , the numbers may all be accepted 
as the approximate number of years required for the various 
stages of weathering. Hence stages (2) and (3) may have 
required each about 500 years. "'^ 

III. The fourteen days' journey. The actual distance 
from Kensington to Hudson Bay at the mouth of Nelson 
River is about eight hundred fifty miles. To this must 
be added about two hundred miles for the windings of the 
river. This makes a total of ten hundred fifty miles which 
would make an average journey of seventy-five miles per 
day. To make seventy-five miles per day against a rapid 
current or on foot is manifestly impossible. This has, there- 
fore, been used as an argument against the authenticity of 

*^Ibid., 236-37. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 25 

the inscription. Such objectors overlook, however, that the 
physical impossibility of such a rate of travel would be just 
as obvious to the i-une master as to the critics. If he were a 
forger he must have been a veiy learned and intelligent man 
and such a man would not have made such an obvious blun- 
der. He would in all probability have computed the distance 
carefully and then divided it into easy journeys of twenty 
miles or less per day. 

The rune master did not make a blimder, however, in 
stating that it was fourteen days' journey to the sea (Hudson 
Bay) . The difficulty is that the meaning of the term "days' 
journey" has escaped us. The Norsemen of the Middle Ages 
did not have any measure such as w^e now use for estimating 
distances. The Norse word mil, like the English "mile," is 
derived from the Latin mille, a thousand, i.e., milia passuum, 
a thousand paces; we have no Norse nor Teutonic word for 
this. The Slavs have their verst and the Germans their 
Stunde, i.e., the distance covered in one hour's walking. This 
Stunde is a recognized unit of distance whether covered by 
the leisurely gait of a man or the swift pace of a trotting 
horse. 

Similarly the Norsemen, whose travel was mostly done 
on the sea, had a recognized unit of distance. This was "a 
day's sail" or "a day's journej^" Passing along shore from 
headland to headland these sailors early became experts in 
estimating distances, and the distance covered in a day's sail 
with a fair wind became a recognized unit of distance used 
irrespective of how many days it actually took to make the 
journey. This unit of distance for a twelve-hour day, or 
dcegr.wsis from seventy-five to eighty-five miles per daJ^ Thus 
we are always informed that the distance from Bergen to 
Iceland is "seven days' sail" although on that stormy sea it 
nearly always took several weeks to make the journey. Like- 
wise we are told repeatedly that the distance from Iceland to 



26 H. R. Holand 

Greenland is "four days' sail" although this journey usually 
took several weeks owing to storms and adverse ice condi- 
tions. When, therefore, the rune master says it is fourteen 
days' journey to the sea he speaks in terms in which he was 
wont to think. He means to tell us that he estimates the dis- 
tance at fourteen times eighty miles (a day's journey) or 
eleven hundred twenty miles. This agrees very well with 
actual facts. However, this method of reckoning distance is 
not suggestive of modern authorship. 

IV. The numerals. For many years after the rune stone 
was found the most mystifying feature about it was the 
numerals. It was long before they were correctly inter- 
preted. When this was done they were pointed to as strong 
proof of the modern fabrication of the inscription, seeing that 
the rune master "was unable to write dates and numbers ex- 
cept in a system of his own invention." It was not until 1909 
— eleven years after the stone was found — that Helge G jes- 
sing, a philologist of Christiania, was able to show that these 
numerals Avere not an invention of the runic scribe but were 
in perfect accord with runic numerals used in the Middle 
Ages."^ This is another testimony of the unusual scholarship 
that would be required in a modern forger to write this ex- 
traordinary inscription. 

G jessing points out that a Danish writer by the name of 
Ole Worm in 1643 published a work in Latin, entitled Fasti 
Danici, in which these runic numerals occur. This work has 
never been translated nor reprinted. The rune master, if he 
were a forger, must therefore have had access to very rare 
books and was able to read Latin. As to these numerals, Ole 
Worm in this part of his work discusses the ancient primstave, 
or household calendars, which were in use in the Scandinavian 
countries in the Middle Ages. These calendars consisted of 
flat sticks of wood about thirty inches long and two inches 
wide. Upon them was carved a multitude of signs to repre- 

"See his article in Symra, Decorah, Iowa, for 1909, No. 3, 116-19. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 27 

sent the many holy days of the Church, separated by a series 
of dots indicating the number of intervening days. Besides 
this, some of these primstave also contained nineteen numer- 
als — one for each of the moon cycle's nineteen years — by help 
of which one could figure out the different dates upon which 
the new moons of that year would appear. However, when 
we compare the numerals on the rune stone with the corre- 
sponding numerals in Worm's book we find a difference. 
The accompanying illustration shows that they are the same 
in type but differ in detail in every figure : 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 15 14 1,5 16 17 18 19 

r r HrtHit 1 1 m 1 1 1 1 1 
rffppp I T n 

This difference in form shows that while the rune master is 
familiar with the system of numerals preserved for us by 
Worm he has followed another model; which indicates that 
he wrote at a time when these primstave were in daily use 
and plentiful, i.e., in the fourteenth century. 

There is another significant thing about these numbers 
and that is the rune master's way of writing the numbers 10 
and 14. The old Scandinavians used "twenty" as a base in 
their system of notation. Larger numbers were expressed as 
so and so many "twenties." This system still survives ety- 
mologically in such archaic terms as et halvt tjau, i.e., "half 
a twenty" = 10; tres, "three (twenties)" ^ 60; halv-fjers, 
"half of the fourth (twenty) " = 70, etc. We therefore find, 
not nine, but twenty units in their system of notation. Nine- 
teen of these units are shown in the illustration of the num- 
bers used on the primstave. 

The rune master does not use this system. In wi'iting 
nimiber 14 he uses two digits, or, in other words, the compara- 



28 H. R. Holand 

lively modern decimal system which has 10 for its base. He 
also uses this in writing 22 and 1362. G jessing has shown 
that the decimal system was introduced in the North prior to 
1362.^° One might object that the rune master probably knew 
nothing about the rather obscure history of notation and 
wrote as he was wont, thinking that our common decimal sys- 
tem had always been in use. This view is, however, excluded 
when we see how he writes the number 10. An ordinary per- 
son not knowing the history of the decimal system would in- 
variably write 10 with two digits. This has become such a 
fixed rule with us that it is difficult to imagine it was ever 
otherwise. The rune master however uses only one digit. 
The reason for this is that while the decimal system was intro- 
duced into Europe about 1200 A. D. at first it had only the 
figures 1 to 9; the zero was not introduced until about two 
hundred years later. If the rune master had written 10 with 
two digits he would have committed a serious anachronism; 
but in this as in other things he has shown himself to be in 
strict conformity to the usage and limitations of his time. 

These numerals, therefore, so long a puzzle to the critics, 
prove to contain two cogent arguments corroborating the 
authenticity of the inscription. 

V. A V M: Save from evil. In the intimate conformity 
of this prayer with fourteenth century usage we have another 
evidence of the genuineness of the inscription. This was, 
like many other parts of the inscription, objected to, the as- 
sertion being made that the rune master by the use of the 
salutation, "Hail, Mary!" (Ave Maria) in the beginning 
of a prayer for deliverance from bodily peril showed himself 
to be a modern Lutheran or non-Catholic, not conversant with 
the proper use of Catholic prayers. The Angelica Salutatio 
of which the above Ave Maria (Hail, Mary) is the familiar 
beginning, is not, as is well known at least to all Catholics, 

^Ibid., lir. 



The KeTmngton Rune Stone 29 

a prayer for deliverance from bodily peril but a greeting of 
adoration, a divine salutation. A modern Scandinavian forger 
of non-Catholic faith who would have picked up his knowl- 
edge of Catholic usage through literary channels would there- 
fore not have chosen this phrase, Ave Marian in this connec- 
tion. Particularly would this be true if he understood Latin 
(as is shown by the preceding paragraph he must have done) . 
He would then at once have been conscious that the saluta- 
tion, "Hail, Mary," would not seem proper as the beginning 
of a prayer for deliverance from evil. The presumption that 
this is the work of a modern forger therefore seems excluded. 

In the fourteenth century, however, conditions were dif- 
ferent. In those comparatively illiterate days the frequent 
intonation of the Angelic Salutation had given to the expres- 
sion, Ave Maria, an almost talismanic power and the two 
words were largely used as one divine name, or Ave was used 
as an attribute of Maria.^^ The fact that the three letters 
A V 31 are written without any separating marks, whereas 
all other words in the inscription are separated by double 
points, indicates that the rune master considered them as one 
name. To him it was the most sacred name he knew and he 
wished to express reverence in writing it. He therefore used 
Latin letters — the language of the Church — in writing them. 
Archbishop Ireland was deeply impressed by the peculiar 
wording of this prayer and stated that it was strong evidence 
to him that it was written in the Middle Ages.^^ 

As to the prayer, frceelse af illy, which has been con- 
demned as an Anglicism, we find it literally in an ancient folk- 
lore poem harking back to the Black Plague (A. D. 1349) 
but which came to light several years after the stone was 
found. I give the first stanza below, and vn\{ call special 

'^Liljegren states that Ave Maria occurs frequently on inscriptions of the 
Middle Ages as introductory to all kinds of prayers. See his Runlaere, 166-69. 
"St. Paul Dispatch, Dec. 14, 1909. 



30 H. R. Holand 

attention to the last two lines, which, with a slight variation, 
serve as a refrain throughout the ballad: 

Svartedauen for laand aa straand, 
Aa sopa so mangei tilje; 
De vi eg no fer sanno tru, 
De var kje me Herrens vilje. 

Hjaelpe oss Gud aa Maria M0j, 

Frelse oss alle av illi ! 

The Black Plague sped (over) land and sea 
And swept so many a board (floor). 
That will I now most surely believe. 
It was not with the Lord's will. 

Help us God and Virgin Mary, 

Save us all from evil ! ^^ 

Here, as will be noted, we have not only our "illy" pho- 
netically reproduced but we have literally the same prayer 
as on the stone plus the redundant oss alle. The ballad also, 
like the prayer in the inscription, uses the ancient preposition 
af, which has long since been superseded by fra. Altogether, 
this prayer shows most striking conformity to fourteenth cen- 
tury usage here substantiated in its entirety in this old ballad 
w^hich was not published until many years after the rune stone 
was found. 

There are several other aspects of the inscription which 
speak strongly for its genuineness, particularly the runic 
characters. A discussion of these, however, would be too 
technical and voluminous to be attempted in a popular pres- 
entation like this. While the arguments cited above may not 
separately be considered as conclusive, their aggregate weight 
is such as to leave little doubt that we have in this inscription 
a most important record dating from the fourteenth century. 
On the other hand, not a single argument has yet been pre- 

'^ This folksong was communicated by Mr. Olav Tortvei, Moorhead, Minn., 
to Mr. Torkel Oftelie, a folklorist of Fergus Falls, Minn., by whom it was printed 
in Telesoga, No. 1, 1909. Mr. Tortvei was an octogenarian pioneer, now dead, 
who, though illiterate, remembered hundreds of old ballads which he had heard 
in his childhood. Mr. Oftelie sent this ballad — F0rnesbronen — to the eminent 
folklorist Rikard Berge of Telemarken, Norway, who said he had not met with 
it in his researches. 



The Kensington Rune Stone 31 

sented against the inscription which has been found to be 
vahd. It seems obvious that it would be impossible for a 
present-day forger to construct an inscription of such length 
and multiplicity of ideas without leaving indubitable proof of 
his forgery. Particularly would this be true of an inscription 
purporting to date from the fourteenth century which is a 
peculiarly difficult period linguistically, runologically, and 
historically. The multitude of errors which critics have made 
in reviewing the inscription shows the difficulties any one of 
these men would have encountered if he had attempted to 
invent such an inscription. Yet this inscription, coming from 
an uninhabited wilderness, has survived all attacks made upon 
it for more than twenty years. 

In view of this and in view of the great significance of its 
message, it is surely time for our learned societies and institu- 
tions to cease their "waiting and watching" attitude and take 
energetic action in thoroughlj^ investigating the subject.^* 

^* After this article had been sent to the press word was received from Mr. 
Holand that he had located the two skerries mentioned in the inscription and 
had made certain other discoveries in connection therewith. A brief account of 
these discoveries will be given in an early issue of this magazine. 



103 






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